Penguin Plays… with Lego!

Earlier this year I wrote a first ”Penguin Plays…” post (which you can read here) and I mentioned the that I intended to follow that up with more posts on various kinds of play. And here comes a second instalment – about playing with lego!

My main reason for wanting to do a series of posts on the subject of play, is that it’s something which can be complicated for children like Penguin (who’s autistic with developmental delays), and looking back, I think issues around play has been quite central to our experience of living with autism, so far.

Actually, I was thinking of including some old pictures in this post, of Penguin playing with Duplo when he was aged 1-2 years old. But looking through those old pictures still stirs up so many emotions, which take a lot of energy and time for me to process, so I’ve abandoned that idea for now. You see, there are plenty of photos there of our little boy looking intrigued by toys and playing with them in the ways most kids would, without any obvious difficulties. And he’s looking us in the eyes, interacting and sharing smiles, and eating ice cream, porridge and other sticky things (which he’d later go off completely). On his second Christmas, at 21 months old, he got a toy saxophone and almost instinctively knew how to use it, and the same went for the garage and cars he also got that year. He blew into the saxophone and pressed the keys, he drove the toy cars down the ramps and made engine sounds. These were skills of play, which he had for a short while, and then gradually lost again over the next year or so. A few years later, after his diagnosis of autism and at the beginning of us starting a kind of ”intensive training” to help him develop/regain these and other skills, our Penguin no longer knew how to blow into a toy instrument or to make bubbles, he wasn’t interested in driving toy cars, and he wouldn’t make engine sounds (or animal sounds, or any words/parts of words which he’d started using before he regressed).

You might think that he had found other, perhaps more ’neurodiverse’, ways of playing instead. But that was not the case. He hadn’t really developed any other strengths in place of this lost skills. He’s always had a very strong visual memory, and I never noticed any regression in that area, but as his ways of interacting and communicating with us became more limited, that ability too became more hidden.

Some of you who are reading this may think that we should be more accepting of our child’s differences and not try to ’force’ him to play with us just because that’s what ’normal’ kids do. Discussing that could be subject enough for a whole post in itself, so I’ll try to keep it very brief: I would like my child to develop basic skills which can enable him to manage as independent a life as possible when he gets older, and preferably not only manage but also enjoy that life. While learning to ’play’, he’s also working on many of those essential skills. And he enjoys learning and mastering new/regained abilities, but he needs our help and support to get there. And he also enjoys to play and interact, but when something is new to him and it isn’t clear to him what his role in the situation is, it becomes stressful and not enjoyable at all. So he’ll generally avoid doing things that are new to him, which means he misses out on the many opportunities of development which come naturally for most kids.

Penguin’s neurological differences, being autistic, mean that he processes sensory input (what he sees, hears, feels, tastes etc) differently to more ’neurotypical’ people. He can be difficult for him to sort out which of all the things that are going on around him that he should be focusing on. And sometimes it all becomes overwhelming. So to feel safe and comfortable, he will generally stick to the same things. Watch the same dvd’s, eat the same food, etc. He can certainly find joy in new things now and then, and he’s not as rigidly stuck in routines as some others are, but he needs to feel secure before trying new things and he needs support and a bit of a ’loving push’ (a term which Temple Grandin has made popular).

Well, this post was supposed to be about lego, right? Don’t worry, we’re getting there now!

So, when Penguin was 1-2 years old he’d play with Duplo, and while his playing skills gradually and slowly regressed, he did keep on building Duplo towers for a long time. Admittedly it’s a very basic form of play, just stacking pieces on top of each other, but it was an activity he had the ability to do and one which we could quite easily join him in, by building another tower and then joining them up, or by handing him the next Duplo piece, and commenting on the height, colours, wobbliness etc.

Alas, with time, Penguin’s interest/abilities in Duplo-building also faded away, only making very sporadic appearances. And when his therapists (there were usually two of them at each session, and they’d show us examples of exercises we could then work on at home and at his preschool) brought in Duplo pieces and asked him to copy some very simple constructions (such as putting a blue piece on top of a red piece, and perhaps add one more on top of that), it was quite painful to see that he struggled with that, due to poor motor skills and hand-eye coordination. But he was great at matching the colours! So this provided us with a good way to work on copying, which is a form of interaction, and at the same time building better motor skills, hand strength, coordination etc. If you have a child with similar difficulties to our Penguin’s, you might like to try this too? We also used wooden building blocks in a similar way, as that removed the hand-strength aspect which restricted how long we could work with Duplo for before it became too frustrating.

Eventually I felt it could be worth attempting to move onto the normal sized lego bricks. I found a Lego Junior set which I thought looked good, versatile and not too complicated, and I bought it for Penguin as a Christmas gift. And as something to work on together, as a joint effort, it was a success! Some bits were really tricky and requiered quite a bit of help, and sometimes Penguin’s fine motor skills and strength wasn’t quite there yet. But it was a lot more fun building a car and a petrol station etc than the mostly quite abstract Duplo creations we had been limited to until then, so a big plus on the motivation side, not least for me! And to be honest, if the playmate/therapist/teacher person isn’t motivated and engaged in the activity, it’s hard to make it seem exciting and motivating to the learner.

We’ve gone on to building more cars, airplanes, helicopters, fire brigade sets, town houses, holiday houses, boats, space ships and more. We don’t really do pretend play though, so for us ’playing’ with lego is all in the building process. But I suspect that is probably what it’s like for most people, isn’t it..?

Building Together

We’ve established a bit of a system, where my role is mainly to find the next few pieces needed while Penguin does the actual building (as seen in the pictures above). He’s really good at following the step by step instructions which all lego sets come with, but makes the occassional mistake, so I keep and eye and if I spot a mistake I ask if it doesn’t look a bit differently on the picture (while pointing at the detail I’m talking about). I try to avoid the word ”no” and not make a big deal out of mistakes. He’s usually fine with it, but IF he gets upset he may well take the whole thing apart in frustration, and using a kind of ’low-arousal approach’ helps avoiding that.

It’s also important that I take notice of Penguin’s signals showing me when he’s keen to take a break. It’s very easy to tell, as he’ll basically just get up and walk off. Sometimes that’ll be after just 5 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes or more. When he starts to wiggle on his chair and is about to get up, I usually encourage him to stay on for just a little bit longer, with a ”Let’s just do two more pages” or ”Let’s just finish putting the wheels on”, or whatever is relevant at that point, and he’ll generally be fine with that.

Apart from building sets, we still occassionally do the same kind of copying exercises as we used to do with Duplo or wooden blocks. It’s a quick and easy thing to do whenever you’ve got a few minutes. The only preparation needed is to find two of each of a few different pieces.

I loved building with lego when I was little and am really enjoying being able to do it together with Penguin now. The fact that you end up with a pretty cool looking product (which you can see on the box, so it’s clear from the start what you’re working towards) is a big plus motivation wise, and there are so many skills being worked on in the process:

bilateral coordination

hand-strength

fine motor skills

visual discrimination

hand-eye coordination

numeracy

shape, size and colour recognition

understanding instructions

recognising perspectives/dimensions, 2D and 3D

patience, focus, ’staying on task’

…and if you’re doing it as a together activity, like us, then you can add cooperation, turn-taking and social interaction to that list!

I would also say that lego can be helpful in building confidence and a sense of achievement. And when you have a child with disabilities, their weaknesses often get focused on more than their abilities, so for both parent and child it is great to find positive ’CAN do’ things (rather than ’can’t do’), and lego building has very much been one of those for us.

In regards to numeracy (which is not one of Penguin’s strengths, yet anyway), we’ve also tried using lego pieces as a clear way of showing simple addition, such as different ways of adding up to a total sum of four:

However, while being hands-on and clear, this way of working on basic maths doesn’t seem to be very motivating for Penguin. I don’t think he finds it a meaningful activity. So numeracy is still something we mainly work where it appears more or less naturally as a part of other activities, not so much on it’s own. If you have any favourite ways of working on basic maths skills, which you think might work for us too, you are more than welcome to share in the comments! I’ve always got my eyes peeled for more ideas and inspiration.

And just in case this post has inspired you, and you feel like bringing some more lego into your life, I’m adding a few links below to sets which are the same or similar to the ones we’ve been using along our journey so far, plus a couple of ones which I’d love to aquire in the not too distant future… These links are affiliate links, which means that while you pay the same price as you would if you searched these out on Amazon yourself, I might recieve a small percentage from them as thanks for pointing you in their direction. Personally, I really like the Lego Creator range, as those can usually be built into three different options, so you kind of get three sets for the price of one! On a slightly less positive note, we’ve found the Technic range to be a bit on the tough side for us, as many of those pieces require super strong fingers.

Well, that’s all for this time folks, thank you for reading! I’m hoping that these posts on play (I’ve got a few more planned…) can be of some use to others with similar developmental differences to our Penguin, and perhaps help you find more ways of having an enjoyable time together (while working on some useful skills, too)!

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Below are links (click on the pictures!) to building sets which are the same or similar to the ones we have, plus a few that are on our wish list to get!

All links are Amazon Affiliate links, meaning that if you click through and decide to make a purchase, I should recieve a small commission from Amazon (of no extra cost to you, of course!) as thanks for pointing you in their direction. Every little helps, thank you ❤

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32 thoughts on “Penguin Plays… with Lego!”

LEGO is an amazing learning tool. There’s so much you can do with it. J loves playing with LEGO but not actually building it. He gets us to build it and then he plays with it. One of his favorite things to do is take all the pieces off the LEGO people and put together differently. Lovely blog post x

Thank you! Ah, that’s really interesting to hear! I hope you enjoy the building process then 😊 Now that you mention it, I remember changing the clothes, hair, hats etc around on Lego characters as a kid, and how that was quite a fun aspect of it, too. Though I really loved building with it. Sorting all the pieces was something I enjoyed as well 😄xx

I love this post – I’ll have to go through the rest of your play series. It’s such a huge area for us and I like to know how other people tackle it. My 6 year old uses lego therapy at school but at home it’s not his favourite activity. He struggles to connect the pieces too. Having read this, I’m going to try the copying technique, keep it simple and see if we can make progress. Thanks!

Thank you, Lizzie! I hope you’ll find a way to make it work for you both. It’s a lot of trial and error, finding what activities are motivating enough etc, don’t you think? 🙂
I’ve only done one other ’play’ post so far, so not much to go through yet… but I did a post on handwriting exercises in January, that might be of some help (not with play, but with hand-strengthening and other related skills). And we’ve done a few posts on playdough, as that’s also been a great ’tool’ for us, for everything from fine motor skills to learning about the four seasons 😊xx

My girls had megablocks (which I think is the step before Duplo) and they loved it, but sadly neither seems particularly interested in using Lego. We talked about just buying a big tub for our 7yo last Christmas but it’s always that risk of, “she has never shown any interest in this so am I just wasting a present by purchasing this?”, and in the end we bought something else.

It’s great that Penguin is starting to regain some of his skill, though, and I can see that you are putting a lot of time into this with him, and I’m sure he appreciates the 1-on-1 time with you, as well as the feeling of accomplishment once the piece is completed.

And someone really enjoyed this post and added it to the BlogCrush linky for some extra exposure! Feel free to grab your “I’ve been featured” blog badge 🙂 #blogcrush

What a lovely idea for a series. I am so happy for you and Penguin. It must be lovely seeing his confidence grow and slowly regaining his skills. Lego is so versatile in the ways in which it can be used. My eldest plays with it for hours but my youngest is still into Duplo at the moment.

My boys totally love lego and I think it’s one of those toys that will never go out of fashion. I remember playing lego as a child, and although my boy can build the death star now, he’s going to remember building with me like I remember building with my mum #KCACOLS

I think you’re right, it’s one of those classic toys that is too good to disappear. I don’t think my parents ever joined me in building lego though, which is a bit sad. But I’m so glad to be able to build together with my son now. We’re not at Death Star level yet though! 😉x

Lego is great, my daughter has megablocks, which are easier but more limiting. She likes building animals. I love the idea of using Lego for numeracy, I saw something similar recently with dominoes too, the different combinations of numbers that add up to 4, for example. Thanks for linking up with #kcacols, hope you can join us again next time!

Thank you! Yes, it used to be very tricky for us too, to start with, but so much more motivating than some other ways of working on building those finemotor skills etc. The Lego Technic range is still a bit too tough on the fingers for us though… Thank you for hosting, reading and sharing! Take care xx

We also tried lego but unfortunately Oscar’s fingers could not cope with it at all. We found Kids Knex and this was much easier for him to work with. I agree their are so many great benefits to play and especially construction play like this. #thesaysesh

#thesatsesh yes to lego! I bought (me) my son the pizza van for christmas and its amazing! I love the details and the build was rally enjoyable for (me)…us both.
I agree the build is the main play area – J does play with them after but he usually breaks them, and my heart in the process. Love that P has found the joy of the build.

This is a powerhouse of a post. There is so much to comment on so where to start?! Lego is definitely a brilliant ‘toy’. My girls particularly love it at the moment and my boy will have spurts at doing it and then leave it a few weeks. For all the reasons you mention in the post I am keen to encourage it! I really like the ‘freestyle’ copying approach that you have a picture of. I also love sitting with the kids while they (we when it’s me and the girls as they are still quite young for them) go through the booklets – there is something so satisfying about seeing the creation unfold. I’m so pleased Penguin has come back to lego with your help and support and I totally understand where you are coming from about wanting to help him as he gets older. So many topics in this post that you can turn into other posts! xx #thesatsesh

Thank you so much, Hayley!💗 Great to hear that your family is getting a lot of enjoyment out of lego, too! And yes, I think I’ll get back to most of the subjects in this post again and again, in various ways… xx